Strong drop in Asian and European prices on Friday

European gas prices dropped significantly on Friday, both on the spot and the curve. The drop seems to have triggered by the fall in Asian gas prices. Indeed, JKM spot prices dropped to €76.287/MWh on Friday, -16.43% day-on-day. Baseload spot power prices on the Japan Electric Power Exchange rebounded to €779/MWh on Friday (up from €385/MWh on Thursday), but still below the €1220/MWh reached on 11 January. Lower coal prices provided additional downward pressure.

On the pipeline supply side in Europe, Russian flows were almost stable on Friday, at 317 mm cm/day on average (compared to 318 mm cm/day on Thursday). Due to an outage at the Oseberg field, Norwegian flows were lower, averaging 330 mm cm/day, compared to 340 mm cm/day on Thursday.